The Vision 2016 event in Bristol again turned to Central Presentations Ltd (CPL) to deliver full technical production for this 2-day inspirational conference, which was attended by 350 delegates who were motivated and engaged by 25 energizing talks from leading creatives and innovators.
Hailed as the most successful Vision to date, the event was staged in the Anson Rooms at Bristol University’s Student Union building. CPL was working for production company Bright and has been involved in the event for the last four years. This year project manager Mike Radford ensured that everything ran smoothly on site, integrating elements of the venue’s house lighting system where possible into the event design.
In the main room, normally used as a live band stage, they added a laser projector system utilizing a 16 X 9 ft. screen fed by one Panasonic RZ12k laser projector, with a black draped backdrop behind it.
A Barco PDS switcher was used for control and to add in various sources including laptops running individual speaker presentations together with some event laptops provided by CPL and a MacBook Pro with Playback Pro for playback of video content.
The CPL team made the most of the house lighting rig which included some moving heads and LED fixtures, augmenting this with PARs and CORE battery powered wireless up lighters around the room skimming up the walls. They also assisted generally in the lighting design for the room to ensure it was a fresh and invigorating environment to match the vibe of the event.
A d&b Y series sound system was installed, ground supported on stands, specified for its ability to deal with spoken word, and complete with a Yamaha QL1 mixer and a selection of Shure UHF mics.
In two break-out areas, which each catered for around 70 people, CPL installed similar video and audio systems but at a smaller scale, each with a flown Panasonic PT-VZ570 projector and a screen suspended from the house bars with a black drape behind to finish everything neatly. The PA systems for the breakout areas were d&b E series with Sennheiser G3 mics and Allen & Heath QU16 digital mixers.
In the adjacent exhibition area, a live social media wall was prominent in the space, automatically updated with Twitter and Instagram posts, fed via a blend of two Panasonic RZ 12K projectors beaming onto a 14.1 metre wide by 5.1 metre tall surface. The content was co-ordinated using an EventsTag media hub that looked for anything with the Vision 2016 hashtag, and the system was run into a Barco S3 event controller and displayed as a single live feed.
The media wall surface was graduated black to white from bottom to top, and custom cut to fit the available space in the foyer.
Most of the projected material was above 6 ft high, with the projectors located on top of draped racking to conceal them as much as possible. The idea was also that as people moved through it to mingle and network with one another, they would also walk through some of the content as they broke the low angled projector beams, so the resolution was important to ensure the content didn’t distort even when the beams were disrupted.
On the wall running down the opposite side of the room was a series of windows with daylight steaming in, but in spite of these, the projectors proved bright and intense enough to cut through with excellent results.
“It was a great event with lots of interaction from the delegates and we all enjoyed collaborating with Bright’s crew again,” commented Mike.